The Game of Life

I was looking at a full-page magazine ad from The Teaching Company. I've known of this outfit for a while. They periodically send me CDs containing sample material from their courses, and I borrowed one of their courses from the public library. As far as I can judge, their material is authoritative.

This particular ad was headlined "Master the Rules of Competitive Behavior," and was for a course titled "Games People Play: Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond." Some of the individual lectures are titled "Practical Applications of Game Theory," "Pure Competition—Constant-Sum Games," "Credibility, Deterrence, and Compellence," "Encouraging Productivity—Incentive Schemes," "Bargaining and Cooperative Games," "Game Theory and Business—Co-optition," and so forth.

I'll admit that maybe I ought to listen to at least some of this course before I base an opinion solely on the ad's copy and the lecture titles. But I think one or two things are obvious, even so.

The last lecture of the course is titled "All the World's a Game." Now, I've often thought that myself. I think a lot of the people who advance themselves and garner a lot of money or power (1) realize the game nature of life, (2) know what the rules of that game are, and (3) play that game skillfully and mercilessly. (This begs for examples. I'd say maybe a Napoleon or some other general, or maybe a Roman emperor who schemed his way to power.)

If I long ago recognized that all of life is a game, why didn't I try to be a successful player of the game? For one thing, recognizing that it's game is not the same thing as being able to play that game for your advantage. Now look at video games (and I must admit I don't play them, so maybe what I have to say is not authoritative): they require certain skills or traits. If the player does not possess these skills or traits to begin with, the game fosters their development by providing reinforcement, a la what we learn about in Psychology 101. I wonder whether playing video games makes people better players of the game of life. I suspect not, for a couple reasons; but it would be getting too far off my track to go there.

Where all this is tending: Looking over the titles of the lectures of the course "Games People Play" explicitly invokes the world of business. This course (or any instruction on how to practically apply game theory) sounds to me a lot like what people are taught in business school: things like how to manipulate employees to get the most out of them, relative to your labor cost (and employees are just another "ingredient" in the product, and employees are fungible--that is, interchangeable: any chair in the company can be filled by any person possessing certain qualifications). How to manipulate your customers, to get them to buy your product. And (when necessary), how to manipulate lawmakers and government regulators so as to enable you to carry on your game-playing in the most favorable environment possible.

My feeling about all this is that it seems cynical to me, first and foremost. Also, it's arrogant. The attitude or assumption is that the bosses (executives and/or those getting their MBAs) are smarter and therefore are fully justified in exploiting people and treating them just like any resource, even an inanimate resource. To say that it’s manipulative would be to restate what I hope I've already established. It even seems to me hostile, aggressive, and evil. Why, in a society that is supposed to be egalitarian, do we accept that some people have the right to manipulate others? Why do we let our government, our bosses, our teachers, our doctors, and even the people to whom we are customers, have secrets from us? And tell us half-truths and untruths? They believe we are not entitled to know this or that (I've blogged about this elsewhere). They know what is good for us (to know and to not know).

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein